Storyline or Gameplay?

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: Dethfrumbelo
Oblivion had a good story?

It was alright, morrowind's was better.

 

[aCynic2]

I enjoyed the hell out of Doom and that had a pretty slim story.

I enjoyed BG/BGII and that had a great story.

I like NWN2's gameplay, when it's working right, the story was mediocre. NWN works fine outside of the OOC.

It really depends.

 

[Dumac]

Solid gameplay makes a good game, however addition of a good story makes a game great. All my top games have an intriguing story.

 

[jjones]

I'll take an equal dose of both, but gameplay is generally more important to me than story. But even great gameplay, outside of multiplayer, will lose me if there's not at least a somewhat decent story.

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: jjones
I'll take an equal dose of both, but gameplay is generally more important to me than story. But even great gameplay, outside of multiplayer, will lose me if there's not at least a somewhat decent story.

All the great games seem to have both ,very good storyline and gameplay so I'll vote for both.If I have to choose between the two then gameplay.

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

Solid gameplay. A storyline, even a very good one, can sometimes take away from a game.

 

[coloumb]

My preference depends upon my mood - so both works for me.

 

[Fenixgoon]

ideally, both (baldur's gate 2, baby! ) but gameplay > story in terms of game longevity.

 

[PingSpike]

If I wanted a good story, I can get that from a book or a movie. A good story is welcomed in a game with excellent gameplay...so long as it knows how to stay the fuck out of the way of said gameplay!

 

[KeithTalent]

I would vote both are more important, but that doesn't really make sense.

So I'll go with gameplay.

KT

 

[imported_Imp]

Gameplay.

Very few and I mean VERY few stories, as hard as they try, are actually captiviating. Recently, the only story that I've actually payed attention to is Oblivion; even then, only the voice acting and star power made it so. Guess I'll throw in HL2: Episode 1 and 2. Bioshock was cool, but honestly, I did not really care until the twist near the end. The other 99% of the time, it's the gameplay. I love Stalker and Medieval 2 cause of their gameplay, not their story, which is sad. Way back when, Baldur's Gate, BG II + exp, Icewind Dale and Deus Ex actually made me care. Maybe I've been jaded or stories just suck nowadays.

 

[gamepad]

Originally posted by: HamburgerBoy
I love a good story but I play games for gameplay. If I cared primarily about story I'd read a book.

This is exactly what popped in my head before opening this thread.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: Dethfrumbelo

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
I care mainly about plot, dialog, character development and interactivity.

Dreamfall is probably the best example of absolutely shitty gameplay combined with a great story.

Should I play The Longest Journey before I play Dreamfall?

It would be a good idea to play TLJ first, yes. Several of the original characters appear in Dreamfall, and past events are referenced. Without TLJ, you'll be having quite a few 'Huh?' moments in Dreamfall. TLJ is the better game overall.

i think you will have a couple of 'huh' moments in DreamFall2, anyway. The story is confusing, overlong and self-contradictory. The gameplay is horrible. But if you like 'puzzles', it is an adventure game for you.


i have to say [for me] 'it depends' ... for FPS, the story can take a backseat to gameplay. For RPG the story is crucial.

BioShock was a total rip of SS2 ... unfortunately its story is self-contradictory [which annoyed the hell out of me]. 2Worlds has a boring story and so-so gameplay. Oblivion was a mix of genius writing [Dark Brother/SI] and mundane - gameplay was sufficient. Gothic3 was a genius story that fell flat at the end and the buggy gameplay almost ruined it completely. Fable LC was a great story.

So far - and i finished the Beta at Level 20 - both the story AND gameplay have me hooked in HGL

 

[Skacer]

Originally posted by: Mem
All the great games seem to have both ,very good storyline and gameplay

I refuse to believe that is true. Especially since you used the word "all". Quake1 had almost 0 story. Portal had very little of a story, infact most puzzle games don't, so unless you're stating no puzzle games have ever been great that immediately breaks that statement. Doom2 didn't have more than a paragraph for a story, neither did Duke Nukem really. MMORPGs tend to have lore, but never anything that resembles an actual story.

So what genre exactly does thrive on Stories? Ah yes, RPGs, but then, if you look at the genre itself, 95% of all RPGs have very cliche and extremely generic stories. Take Dragon Quest for example, people actually expect it to have a cliche story yet DQ8 was an epic game.

Games with truely good stories are extremely few and far between, this is exact reason Planescape got such a cult following for actually being one of the very few games with an engaging and interesting story.

I saw Oblivion listed as good story by a few people. That could not be further from the truth. Oblivion, no, ALL of the Elder Scrolls games fall into the RPG standard of "Extremely cliche story used to jump start fun RPG game". It's the ol, free this weird prisoner here and let him go save the kingdom. It's almost vomit inducingly cliche. Both Morrowind and Oblivion suffered from insanely short main quests. But here is the point, the Elder Scrolls series has never been about stories, Bethesda is known for 1 reason, creating huge worlds that you can explore in any manner you choose. They create sandbox RPGs which is almost the exact opposite of a linear story driven RPG. An example of a linear story driven RPG would be the Final Fantasy series.